Brian Kelly, welcome to the SEC Football Media Days circus

ATLANTA – New LSU head football coach Brian Kelly is about to get a real welcome to the Southeastern Conference here Monday morning.

That’s when the 37th annual SEC Football Media Days, a four-day affair of 14 head coaches with unbridled optimism and 42 stylin’ and profilin’ players trying to sound interesting while not providing cyber bulletin board material, gets underway in the College Football Hall of Fame.

Since Notre Dame is a football independent and not a league member, Kelly apparently never experienced taking part in preseason conference media days in his 12 seasons of guiding the Fighting Irish.

The last league media day that Kelly appeared was in his last season as Cincinnati’s head coach at the 2009 Big East Conference Media Days. By that time, Kelly had built some street cred with the Cincy media after winning 21 of 27 games and a league title in 2008.

But at his first Big East media day in 2006, he was miffed that no Cincinnati media were in attendance.

“I am still going to coach the team and we are still going to compete for a Big East title,” Kelly said. “But it is sad for the fans of Cincinnati to not have a legitimate, credible local media outlet. Our fans would be better served going to Rivals, Sporting News, or even the Boston Globe because they are credible sources who care enough about their product to be here.”

He won’t be lacking for an audience Monday. More than 1,000 credentials have been issued, so he’ll be asked the same questions worded differently 100 times. His press conference in the main media room will be televised on the SEC Network starting at 11:35 a.m. CT.

If Kelly is anything like he has been so far with the LSU media contingent, he'll be fine. He does have a sly sense of humor, which is often so shocking he quickly has repeatedly added, “I’m just kidding.”

Rarely has a new head coaching hire been fried by the sanctimonious national media for leaving the hallowed grounds of Notre Dame which hadn’t won a national title since 1988 to coach at a place that has won three national championships under three different coaches since 2003.

Kelly was ripped for signing a 10-year, $95 million contract.

Then, he was dissected because of his less-than-stellar effort to sound like a Southerner when he said “fah-muh-lee” after being introduced at an LSU home basketball game.

Of course, he was nailed for his painful John Travolta “Pulp Fiction” dancing with a recruit on an LSU-produced video.

Everybody wanted to know what in the hell happened to boring ‘ol, straight and narrow, stern-as-the-day-is-long Brian Kelly?

Louisiana happened.

LSU fans don’t care about Kelly’s failed attempt at a Southern accent or if he looked like he had body parts falling off him while dancing with recruits.

All that matters is having a proven head coach with a tried-and-true formula for building a consistent national contender who’s finally in a place that has some of the best facilities and one of the most fertile in-state recruiting grounds in the country.

It's why Kelly came to LSU. Sure, his paycheck is hefty but he’s coaching in a state and in a conference and in a section of the country where (for better or worse) football is the cultural king.

There’s a reason why the SEC has won 12 of the last 16 college football national championships and has played in the last 15 of 16 national title games. It’s because the D.N.A. of the South is football on all levels and there isn’t a head coach worth his salt who would pass up coaching in the SEC, especially at LSU where everything is in place for a coach to challenge for national championships.

You just have to hire the right head coach who has a track record of understanding and executing what it takes to succeed on the highest level over and over and over.

And that head coach must hire the best assistants, especially the coordinators, to help them succeed.

That’s where LSU national championship coaches Les Miles and Ed Orgeron ultimately failed. It’s also where Nick Saban has succeeded at Alabama winning six national titles with five different offensive coordinators.

If recruiting is any indication, the only place Kelly’s staff now has to prove itself is on the field. The Tigers’ month of July – 10 Class of 2023 commits including five ranked among the top eight players in their respective states – is an indication Kelly has hired a bunch of piranhas as recruiters.

No doubt Kelly will be asked repeatedly Monday about fitting into the Louisiana and LSU culture.

There were the same questions about Saban when he came from Michigan State, replaced Gerry DiNardo as LSU’s head coach in 2000 and won a national title three years later.

The more Saban won, the faster those “culture” questions disappeared. And it’s going to be the same with Kelly.

In the meantime, maybe Kelly should greet the SEC media contingent Monday with a big “Howdy” and add that he’s happy to be part of the “SEC fa-muh-lee.”

Then, I’ll ask him if he has signed an NIL deal with a Baton Rouge dance studio.

After that, the rest of the day will be a piece of cake.